I'm at the stage where I automatically reject all phonecalls where I don't recognise the number, and then Google that number. 99% of the time I then end up adding the number to my Contacts with the name 'Spam'. Why isn't anyone fixing this?
Bonus anecdote: I used to never use my work phone, but our work phones were recently replaced with Microsoft Lync phones - now I get spam phonecalls at work.
That leaves the you've won a free cruise/insurance/alarm scam companies, but they mostly don't call over and over again.
The point is not to argue with them about whether they should be calling you etc., it is to advertise yourself as a dead lead.
I don't think I'm suggesting something that wastes part of your life. What I suggest directly restores usefulness to the phone, and it likely forces the call center companies to report unsuccessful calls instead of no answers to their customers (and if done in large numbers it should have an impact).
That is thankless work, the people on the phones are mostly not scum, but the number of people that answer the phone and treat them as such makes me feel for them so I'm happy to look the other way at some minor bad behavior like being short with a person or hanging up, when every third person they talk to is some jerk who only knows how to yell "IM ON THE DO-NOT-CALL LIST I JUST TALKED TO YOU LAST WEEK I ALREADY TOLD YOU NOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING IS ILLEGAL GIVE ME YOUR MANAGER RIGHT NAO!!1one" Just because you talked to _some_ call center somewhere, it does not follow that every call center in the fleet automatically knows you are not to be contacted.
We have do-not-call lists, and the best way to make sure you get that treatment is to ask for it. You don't have to ruin your day and someone else's by getting mad about it. Five magic words can liberate you: "do not call me again".
Second best way: when you sign up for services, don't give them your phone number! They can't give it to us if they don't have it to begin with. If hearing the phone ring makes you so mad, seriously just don't give it out to any companies that could just as easily deal with you by post.
The other side of it is that being polite or neutral probably costs you less time and energy than embracing your rage.
You're right that it'd save me some effort being less rage-y about this, but if you're going to be distracting me and wasting my time, I'm going to give you some form of payback.
For the record, I subscribe to the George Carlin definition of A Phone Call, "The brief exchange of a few vital pieces of information." I am with you, I honestly don't want to get phone calls from anyone for pretty much any reason.
Most surprising to me was to find out that when you ask a bill collector to stop calling, they actually do stop calling. If they don't, they could be liable for up to $1000 per infraction plus damages by the FDCPA!
All I get is illegitimate calls and have therefore resorted to calling my friends and colleagues: "I do not answer phone calls. Period. Ever. If you need me, arrange a Skype/Hangout/Facetime or even voice call in advance."
My suggestion will stop the companies and charities. I don't think anything will stop the political groups. 3 bad calls a week isn't perfect, but it makes the phone useful (this is about what I get here). If you want to argue about what legitimate means and pay for a useless phone, that's your prerogative.
I was receiving the same robo-call regarding my "innactive Google+ page" that they wanted to build for me for weeks from a different number each day meaning that blocking a number was pointless. Eventually I took the call, and stayed on the line till I got a person who I was able to fish enough information about the business to file a complaint. Filed one with the Better Business Bureau and also contacted the company CEO directly using info I found in an old Whois record that hadn't been cleaned up (their public one had since been masked). I cold called their office till I got ahold of him, and told him about the claim I'd filed regarding their business calling a number on the do-not-call list.
This is what it took to stop this one instance. I've received others. Sometimes I block, but when it's a recurring call from different numbers, the Better Business Bureau is the way to go. Particularly if you can get the name and number of the company that the lead-generation firm hands you off to. It catches their sales guy off-guard everytime.
This all takes time ... but I recently was receiving a lot of calls from people I needed to speak with, but knew I didn't already have their numbers in my phone, so I had no choice but to answer. The ones I've taken-on have been effective and the BBB complaints have been answered and addressed quickly.
For the other stuff, I've found it to be very effective to learn a few German phrases and reply loudly with them. You get marked as a bad lead.
If it's somewhat important, they can email me later and schedule a call.
If it's important, they'll usually leave a message or send an e-mail.
You can also register them as spam numbers, so any unsolicited SMS messages go into a spam folder. Not sure how much of a problem this is in the US, but here in the UK I almost daily get texts from PPI claim companies, dodgy law firms and the like.
My experience with implementing this is most spammers are pretty dumb or aiming at dumb targets, so a VOIP asterisk rule will get hit hundreds of time over the years by the same company.
You can also whitelist just your contacts list, block area codes with wildcards, or block private numbers.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/31/cyanogenmod-10-2-to-...
For stock Android I recall being able to add the numbers to a contact and make them go to voicemail, but that was an annoyingly unusable workaround. There may be better options these days.